June 03, 2010

Go Outside [by Jennifer Michael Hecht]

Dear Bleaders,

OTG I have become, like, faithful to you. I posted this little nostrum on Dear Fonzie yesterday and the sense of having bled but not on you has been driving me to distraction. It's a nice drive. You should go. So I herewith repost. I ain't, as I need not remind you, no monument to Emily re-Post. Heh, Emily re-Post. Anyway, you get a new photo, entitled, "I've got squash blossoms, baby, and I'm gonna fry 'em." So. This I addressed Dear Crazy and Near-Crazy Bleaders, (which I believe covers all of you. That's some duvet.)

It is a beautiful day. Go outside. Going outdoors helps the crazy and fast. Your brain can tell your arm to move and it just moves, no delay, but you walk out of your bright room and down the basement stairs and it takes a full half hour to get full night vision. Why so slow? It’s chemical.

The rods in your eyes use the chemical rhodopsin to absorb photons and thereby perceive light. When a rhodopsin molecule absorbs a photon, it is split into two: a retinal molecule and an opsin molecule, which then slowly recombine. When your eyes are flooded with bright light all your rhodopsin is turned into retinal and opsin. If you then put yourself into the dark there is no rhodopsin and you just have to wait for your retinal and opsin to recombine into rhodopsin. (The retinal, btw, is derived from Vitamin A., hence all sorts of things you've heard of.) There is no rushing the rate of it.

Anyway, about your crazy. Your crazy is contained in the room you are in. The room in which you loiter. When you step outside, outdoors, into the wide open upness (if urbanly not side-to-side), your crazy expands immediately to fill the immense space and almost none of it is left in your head.

Crazy taken outside does not act like an eye going from lightness to dark, but rather like an arm being asked to swat a fly off your picnic. It’s not a slow influence towards sanity, it is Jack stands up and gets out of the box. Climbs out of his little metal cube, regards the winder with some wry distaste, shudders, walks away.

Out of your boxes, crazies. It is not sufficient to imagine leaving the house, which is why I did not take a picture of the sky for you, I thought you might imagine gazing upon it to be sufficient. There are mechanical factors involved, beyond what you can factor. Stand up and get out there.

Comments

Go Outside [by Jennifer Michael Hecht]

Dear Bleaders,

OTG I have become, like, faithful to you. I posted this little nostrum on Dear Fonzie yesterday and the sense of having bled but not on you has been driving me to distraction. It's a nice drive. You should go. So I herewith repost. I ain't, as I need not remind you, no monument to Emily re-Post. Heh, Emily re-Post. Anyway, you get a new photo, entitled, "I've got squash blossoms, baby, and I'm gonna fry 'em." So. This I addressed Dear Crazy and Near-Crazy Bleaders, (which I believe covers all of you. That's some duvet.)

It is a beautiful day. Go outside. Going outdoors helps the crazy and fast. Your brain can tell your arm to move and it just moves, no delay, but you walk out of your bright room and down the basement stairs and it takes a full half hour to get full night vision. Why so slow? It’s chemical.

The rods in your eyes use the chemical rhodopsin to absorb photons and thereby perceive light. When a rhodopsin molecule absorbs a photon, it is split into two: a retinal molecule and an opsin molecule, which then slowly recombine. When your eyes are flooded with bright light all your rhodopsin is turned into retinal and opsin. If you then put yourself into the dark there is no rhodopsin and you just have to wait for your retinal and opsin to recombine into rhodopsin. (The retinal, btw, is derived from Vitamin A., hence all sorts of things you've heard of.) There is no rushing the rate of it.

Anyway, about your crazy. Your crazy is contained in the room you are in. The room in which you loiter. When you step outside, outdoors, into the wide open upness (if urbanly not side-to-side), your crazy expands immediately to fill the immense space and almost none of it is left in your head.

Crazy taken outside does not act like an eye going from lightness to dark, but rather like an arm being asked to swat a fly off your picnic. It’s not a slow influence towards sanity, it is Jack stands up and gets out of the box. Climbs out of his little metal cube, regards the winder with some wry distaste, shudders, walks away.

Out of your boxes, crazies. It is not sufficient to imagine leaving the house, which is why I did not take a picture of the sky for you, I thought you might imagine gazing upon it to be sufficient. There are mechanical factors involved, beyond what you can factor. Stand up and get out there.

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Radio

I left it
on when I
left the house
for the pleasure
of coming back
ten hours laterto the greatnessof Teddy Wilson"After You've Gone"on the pianoin the cornerof the bedroomas I enterin the dark